If on a Winter's Day a Detective…
by frozen-delight
Summary: Sherlock has a new assistant. Lestrade may never recover.


A/N: Written for the lovely **a_phoenixdragon** for being such a warm and supportive reader of all my stories. Betaed by the wonderful **dioscureantwins**. Any remaining mistakes are mine, of course.

This is a first glance at a new 'verse I'm intending to write, although quite what that is should (hopefully) not yet be self-evident. :)

Thanks for reading, please enjoy!

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**If on a Winter's Day a Detective…**

Detective Inspector Lestrade was used to his fair share of weirdness ever since he'd first started consulting and befriending a certain Sherlock Holmes. Nonetheless, he was quite unprepared for the sight that greeted him at a crime scene in Lambeth on a grey afternoon in mid-January.

At first glance the picture seemed familiar enough. Behind the cordon Sherlock Holmes was crouched down on the pavement, his nose a mere inch from the puddle of blood that decorated the spot where Mark Gibson, thirty-five-year-old trader, single, had kicked the bucket. What astonished and amazed Lestrade, though, was the person standing next to Sherlock, none other than Mycroft Holmes's pretty brunette assistant, known to all only as Anthea. (If it hadn't been for the fact that not even Sherlock had managed to find out her real name, Lestrade would rather have suspected that she was simply trying to make up for the serious childhood trauma of having gone to school with three or four other girls with the same popular name, such as Anna or Emma or Lucy.) Anthea, whatever her real name and her reasons for keeping it a secret, was typing away on her smartphone as nonchalantly as if she were standing in the middle of a merry garden party. With her complete disregard for the gruesome surroundings and his intense focus on the murder scene, she and Sherlock certainly made for a very odd crime-solving couple.

The smokers outside the coffee shop on the other side of the street were watching them with vague fascination. Lestrade blinked several times and pulled his scarf more tightly around his throat before approaching them. Sherlock looked up and acknowledged his presence with a plaintive, 'You're late.'

Thankfully, Lestrade knew his consulting detective well enough to correctly attribute Sherlock's complaint to John's absence rather than to his own late arrival. Perhaps Lestrade ought to give him a hint one day that despite the mysterious coat and the fanciful speech he was quite easy to read once you knew what to look out for. Quite probably, though, the one and only inventor of the science of deduction would neither be proud nor pleased to see his own methods applied against him. 'John still busy with his book?'

'How many proofs can one possibly have to go through?' Sherlock asked, sounding aggrieved.

'No idea, mate,' Lestrade replied levelly, although he also felt a little incensed on Sherlock's behalf. Not even to mention on his own behalf. After all, John fussing endlessly over missing commas and spaces left _him_ to deal with the bored and lonely consulting detective. 'Not really my area.'

'But crime solving is?' Sherlock asked scathingly.

Lestrade refused to rise to the bait and merely inquired, gesturing towards Anthea, 'She your assistant today?'

Sherlock nodded and bent back over the puddle of blood with a transfixed expression as though it were a crystal ball that might reveal all the mysteries of the future to him.

'Hello,' Lestrade now turned to greet Anthea.

She looked up from her blackberry and eyed him with a slightly wary, surprised half-smile. 'Hi,' she said, absolutely no recognition on her face, leaving Lestrade feeling distinctly unsettled.

'I'm Greg Lestrade, Scotland Yard. We've met a couple of times,' he tried to jog her memory. 'We even shared a cup of coffee once at Bart's that time when Sherlock nearly drowned.'

'I didn't drown! I had the situation under perfect control the entire time!' Sherlock interjected indignantly from his stoop on the pavement, while Anthea continued to stare at Lestrade with a bemused smile. 'Oh!' she said, her pretty features still disconcertingly neutral. 'Hi!'

Lestrade glanced helplessly at Sherlock, not sure how to proceed. He was pretty sure that Mycroft Holmes wouldn't employ an amnesiac. Also, during their previous encounters Anthea had struck him as an incredibly smart woman. Therefore, he simply didn't know what to do with the obvious fact that she had no clue who she was talking to.

Sherlock glanced up at them and rolled his eyes at Anthea. Then, seeing Lestrade's expression, he rolled them yet again. 'I can't believe you fell for that,' he scoffed and Anthea giggled, delighted with her childish little prank. 'Really, someone ought to remove you from your post as quickly as possible, _Detective Inspector_, if you're that gullible. Oh, wait…' he added, reaching into his coat pocket and waggling Lestrade's badge triumphantly, 'I already have.'

Then he casually tossed it back at Lestrade, who fortunately managed to grab it because he'd actually been a better than average rugby player once. Anthea giggled again and returned her attention to her smartphone. Blankly, Lestrade stared at the pair of them and wondered how the hell he was supposed to not just deal with _one_ child at his crime scene, but two.

A more perceptive man might have wondered if maybe Anthea's performance didn't contain a grain of truth. Namely, that even if she could easily have presented a comprehensive list of all the facts and figures that made up Greg Lestrade, DI, from his bathroom habits to where he preferred to buy his fish and chips, she didn't _know_ him, nor did she care to. And he might have generalised that her dealings with Lestrade were symptomatic of the little interest or regard she had for humanity as a whole, with perhaps the exception of the two Holmes brothers.

As it were, Lestrade restricted himself to the more good-natured interpretation that there probably was no way you could deal with two Holmeses on a regular basis and not go nuts yourself. After all, Sherlock was batshit crazy, as far as Lestrade was concerned, and Mycroft Holmes was even worse, hiding his world dominion lunacy behind a façade of stuffy smugness. (Lestrade remembered John confessing to him during one of their pub crawls that he'd felt decidedly safer in his dealings with Afghan Taliban than with the man who professed to occupy a minor position in the British government.) That conjoint level of madness simply had to rub off on you.

Truth be told, Lestrade rather suspected that the same thing could be said for himself. DI Gregson, for one, was known to have hinted as much to the Chief Superintendent on more than one occasion. Needless to say, though, Gregson wasn't so much concerned about Lestrade losing perspective as he was embittered that Sherlock Holmes flat out refused work with him.

Lestrade considered it a privilege to be working cases with Sherlock and so he endured all the madness that came with it. Right now, this mostly meant braving the cold and waiting patiently for Sherlock to make his thrilling deductions. Oh and to survive that incensing element of mystique together with the nerve-grating onslaught of insults, but then that was par for the course.

Where Lestrade and his officers hadn't been able to make out much more than a puddle of blood and a corpse, the latter now transferred to the morgue for further inspection, Sherlock spotted several details that coaxed intrigued 'Oh!'s and 'Ah!'s out of him. Not that he would have pointed out to Lestrade exactly what had caught his attention, _obviously_. After all, that would only have robbed him of the opportunity to insult Lestrade's intelligence for not being able to follow his wild thought processes.

Today, Lestrade rather felt that Sherlock's criticism was more withering than usual, but since he interpreted this as an indicator of how keenly Sherlock missed his blogger and thought that at least one person present ought to behave like a sensible adult, he decided to let it pass.

Still, he was quite glad when Sergeant Donovan arrived and interrupted Sherlock's stream of deductions and insults in order to rant about DI Gregson, who'd just single-handedly ruined her investigation of the series of burglaries in Belgravia.

'Can you imagine it?' she shouted hotly. 'I've spent weeks tracking down that receipt, I even went undercover in that dirty brothel to trace the activities of Smith's gang, and believe me that wasn't half the fun it sounds like, and then he just … the incompetent, bureaucratic arsehole!'

'I never thought I'd see the day where we'd agree on something, Donovan,' Sherlock said silkily. Smirking to himself, Lestrade thought that when it came to DI Gregson, Sherlock would probably find himself agreeing with every single officer at the Met whose opinion he'd usually scorn.

Without looking up from her phone, Anthea informed them, 'I have it on good authority that ever since his wife left him Detective Inspector Peter Gregson has been a regular at Marie-Claire's establishment. Of course he'd hate you to investigate any further in these quarters.'

Lestrade whistled and made a mental note to hint at that delicate situation the next time Gregson obstructed one of his investigations or denigrated his judgement.

'Freak's got a girlfriend now?' Donovan muttered to Lestrade, staring at Anthea suspiciously as though she'd just proclaimed the morally abject hypothesis that child labour was the backbone of international business.

Lestrade didn't reply. Privately, he thought it was a good thing that Donovan hadn't met Mycroft Holmes in person yet. The realisation that there were three people, or, in Donovan-speak, _freaks_, in London who all knew far more about the private lives of its inhabitants than should be legal would probably have been too much for her to take in.

Meanwhile, Sherlock had gone back to listing his random observations on the murder case, interspersed with acid remarks on how obvious and straightforward all of it was. After listening to him for a minute, Donovan looked like she might like to take her anger at Gregson out on him, but before Lestrade had any cause to step in, a radical breach of the hitherto strictly observed crime scene protocol occurred.

'In short,' Anthea put in as Sherlock was forced to take a breath, 'we're looking for a fit, red-haired, liberalist woman who's roughly five foot four inches tall, has an elderly cocker spaniel and prefers to drink her coffee with almond milk and a touch of caramel syrup. Oh, and who has a propensity for stabbing pushy strangers with the nail scissors she keeps in her purse, of course. The surveillance footage in the coffee shop over there should help you identify her.'

Lestrade, Donovan and Sherlock all gaped at her. Sherlock was the first to recover. 'I was just getting to that!' he protested, peevish.

Lestrade briefly wondered if he ought to have mentioned to Anthea that the duties of being Sherlock's assistant commonly entailed saying various versions of _Brilliant!_ in an awestruck voice and not actually solving his cases for him.

'Yes, I know,' Anthea replied cheerfully, patting Sherlock's arm, 'but I wanted to cut short the drama a bit. I'm a busy woman, after all, dear Sherlock. I've got a country to run and your brother to shag, I'm quite indispensable.'

Sherlock stared at her. After savouring his shocked expression for a second or two, Anthea's face broke into a mischievous smile.

Lestrade grinned. 'Can't believe you fell for that one, mate.' Sherlock glared at him.

'I like her,' Donovan said, no trace of anger left on her face, 'she can stay. – I suggest you always invite her in for crime-solving in the future and forego the freak altogether.'

Lestrade winced internally. Donovan had sincerely apologised to Sherlock after his return from the dead for accusing him of being a fraud, but this hadn't stopped her from maintaining her just as sincere dislike of him, nor had it made her refrain from manifesting said dislike at every given opportunity. While Lestrade wished she would stop calling Sherlock _freak _altogether, he really felt he ought to have given her a quick briefing on when absolutely not to do so. Such as when she was standing right in front of what Lestrade considered the modern-day equivalent of the ancient goddess of hunting, and the addressee of Donovan's insults happened to be one of the two mortals she'd taken a shine on.

'Hey,' Anthea said slowly and turned around to face Donovan with a cheery wave that could only be described as chilling. 'Lovely to meet you at long last, Sergeant Donovan. Now, if you'd like to remain Sergeant Donovan, I rather suggest you never say that again. You see, there's this button on my phone, and if I press it right now, you'll be stuck in Burkina Faso for the rest of your life before you know it.'

Donovan stared at her for a moment. Then she grinned. 'You're awesome.'

Anthea beamed. 'I know.' Her eyes returned to her phone. Tapping away swiftly on the keys of her phone, she added, 'Now that we've established that, I'll return the compliment of saying you're not too bad either, and I'm very glad you're no longer dating that rat-faced forensics guy. He was a dick, you know.'

'Incompetent. You forgot to mention _incompetent_,' Sherlock corrected her, as though that made all the difference.

Lestrade ran a cool hand over his face. As usual, the crime scene dynamics were getting out of his control at astonishing speed. Only a couple of seconds ago he'd been fearing for Donovan's life, yet now Anthea and Donovan had apparently already moved on to the stage of flirtatious bonding, seemingly following a rule book for interpersonal relationships that was decipherable only to independent, smart professional women with a flair for originality. Really, Lestrade thought and shook his head for good measure, this wintry afternoon was growing more peculiar by the minute.

Donovan blinked. 'How do you know who I've been dating?' she asked carefully, brows furrowed, indicating that the honeymoon was over and Anthea was in danger of being regrouped once more to Donovan's mental freak cabinet. Evidently, her flair for originality wasn't quite as highly developed when it came to matters of data protection and data security.

'Big Brother,' Anthea said.

'I don't think Mycroft personally monitors all the security cameras in the country,' Sherlock objected with a frown.

'I was talking about the book,' Anthea clarified.

'There's also a film,' Donovan added.

'And a reality TV show,' Lestrade completed the list.

Sherlock stared at them all as if sincerely concerned for their mental health. 'Ah,' he said at length. 'Pop-cultural reference. Boring. – Since Anthea's already told you all there is to know about this petty little murder, do you have another case you're incapable of solving, Lestrade?'

'No,' Lestrade said, shaking his head. When Sherlock's mouth twitched miserably, he added, 'You know, some people are actually glad that the streets of London aren't lined with dead bodies.'

Needless to say, this argument did nothing to lighten Sherlock's forlorn expression. It made Lestrade think that maybe he really ought to stop by at John's after work and take him to task.

'It's okay, Sherlock,' Anthea said in the softest voice Lestrade had heard her use so far and gave the detective's arm a short compassionate squeeze. 'We can still play scrabble and blow up your kitchen in the process, if you like.'

'What? Why?' Lestrade asked, wondering if he should take measures to have Mrs Hudson evacuated from Baker Street immediately. And then John was due a really good talking-to. This situation was spiralling out of control rapidly.

'Spinal disc,' Anthea said, which, naturally, explained nothing. Clearly, being in the constant vicinity of the Holmes brothers also altered your genetic structure to the point that you could only talk in riddles, Lestrade added to his mental list of _Idiosyncrasies To Be Observed In Close Associates Of The Holmes Family_. 'What?' he asked again. Next to him Donovan looked just as clueless at the turn their conversation had taken.

'My employer, Mr Holmes,' Anthea expounded in the _Isn't this self-evident?_ sort of tone Lestrade knew only too well from his dealings with Sherlock, 'is currently in surgery after experiencing his third SDH.'

'Lack of exercise,' Sherlock supplied in a dismissive tone. 'As well as an unhealthy di-'

'Yes, yes, let's not go there,' Anthea interrupted him hastily.

Sherlock pouted like a child that had unjustly been denied dessert. 'Why did it have to be the Princess Grace, though? When everyone knows that the world's leading spinal surgeon is in –'

'We're currently experiencing a minor cabinet crisis,' Anthea cut him off. There was a slightly sharp, stressed edge to her usually so cheerful voice. 'Time was of the essence.'

'Do you need any assistance with managing that crisis?' Sherlock asked in an endearingly childlike and hopeful tone.

'It's just politics,' she said. 'Too boring to distract you from your fretting. Besides, I've already got my hands on just the right man to support us through these difficult times.'

'I don't fret,' Sherlock said, though in Lestrade's eyes he was doing a pretty good job of it. Lestrade didn't even need to consciously remind himself that Anthea had left the office during her boss's absence as well as in the middle of a cabinet crisis to solve murders and play scrabble with Sherlock to estimate the scale of Sherlock's worry about his brother. Not just John's absence that was bothering him then. Well, that explained a lot. 'I simply don't like the idea of anyone cutting open my brother's spine. It's a high-risk operation. Imagine what could go wrong… I'm not pushing Mycroft around in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.'

'But you absolutely must!' Anthea insisted. 'I couldn't possibly. I need a free hand for my phone.' As Sherlock looked neither particularly comforted nor convinced at this, Anthea added with a perfectly bland countenance, 'If it's any comfort to you, I'm praying just as fervently as you are that nothing goes wrong. Otherwise that would seriously limit our range of sexual positions.'

Donovan's eyes travelled to and fro between Sherlock and Anthea with an expression that clearly read, _Making jokes about disability – that's just gross. _Lestrade however couldn't find it in himself to take offense. Judging by Sherlock's scandalised expression, Anthea was doing an excellent job at distracting him, if by rather unusual means. Lestrade had to hand it to her – she was a smart, sassy girl. And a good friend. Also, a very small part of Lestrade took a fancy to the idea of Anthea and her boss having rabid sex all over their offices in Whitehall. Honestly, given the bizarre afternoon he'd had, he really was allowed a couple of harmless little fantasies.

'I never want to hear you mention my brother and sex in the same sentence again,' Sherlock demanded, his eyes widening dramatically. Maybe pictures of what Anthea and Mycroft Holmes might get up to in their Whitehall offices were playing in his head too. 'Actually, I'd prefer it if you didn't talk about sex at all. Oh, and I don't want to discuss my perpetual annoyance of a brother either.'

'You're no fun, Sherlock,' Anthea said with a lazy smile. Then her eyes fell on Lestrade and her expression turned downright impish. 'But you are, wow.' She gave an excited little squeal. '34B, in case you're wondering.'

Lestrade stared at her. 'What?'

'My cup size.'

Lestrade felt his cheeks heat up. 'I wasn't … sorry…'

'You were staring at her breasts?' Donovan asked, her eyebrows rising so high Lestrade felt they might take off any minute.

'Don't worry, it's fine,' Anthea replied blithely. 'I know it's not a sexist thing, since you also can't seem to take your eyes of Sherlock's plush little bottom every time he bends over a corpse –'

'Really, Anthea, there's no need to embarrass Lestrade,' Sherlock interrupted her, his eyes twinkling with mild amusement, while Donovan squawked in horror, her daily limit for the stunning, the irregular and the ridiculous clearly exceeded. Lestrade couldn't quite decide which reaction was worse.

'Oh, but there's nothing embarrassing about it,' Anthea waved him off. 'I do it all the time too. _It's the trousers_,' she mouthed at Lestrade. Promptly, Donovan threw a filthy glare at the fine, charcoal grey fabric enveloping Sherlock's legs. Possibly she was already contemplating bringing him in for public indecency.

If all of this hadn't already been enough to assure Lestrade that he wouldn't survive the day with his wits intact, Anthea now drove home the point. 'Besides, I find your attention gratifying,' she murmured with an appreciative glance downwards at her bosom, 'for they are quite nice, aren't they?'

'Yeah, they're… they're great…' Lestrade agreed, feeling more awkward by the second.

'They ought to be, considering that his brother spent a fortune on them,' she chatted on merrily, inclining her head in Sherlock's direction. 'One of his better investments, I dare say, quite unlike those Nokia shares.'

Lestrade stared at her.

'Don't worry, they're quite real,' Sherlock pointed out helpfully, as though he thought Lestrade's embarrassment stemmed solely from the fact that Anthea's breasts might be the creation of a plastic surgeon instead of Mother Nature. 'She has a strict non-surgery policy.' As Lestrade allowed himself to relax again marginally and idly mulled over the question whether Anthea employed the fake talk about her fake breasts as a military strategy while she prepared top-secret interventions in the Middle East, Sherlock added as an afterthought, 'I wish Mycroft did too.'

Immediately, Anthea switched gears, seamlessly transforming from messing-with-Lestrade-for-dubious-reasons to mothering-Sherlock mode. 'Oh Sherlock, he'll be okay. Actually, he ought to have woken up from his anaesthesia by now. Wait a second, I'll check in on him,' she said, lifting up her phone again. Whatever message greeted her on the screen made her cry out in a mixture of surprise and annoyance which Lestrade recognised quite well as the default reaction that Sherlock provoked in him. 'Oh God, he's even worse than you,' Anthea addressed Sherlock, causing Donovan to snort with disbelief. 'He's already checked himself out of the hospital. How irresponsible is that? Who knows, maybe he's bleeding out in some drab little cab as we speak.'

'Don't worry, Mycroft's sense of propriety would never allow him to die in a stranger's car,' Sherlock said, looking infinitely brighter at the news that his interfering older brother was up and about than Lestrade would ever have thought possible.

'True,' Anthea agreed. 'He's very Maggie Smith.'

'Very what?' Sherlock asked, nonplussed.

'You need to watch more TV, darling,' Anthea said. 'Well, I must be off. Got your brother to save. And possibly the world. Cheerio!'

With a dainty little wave, she swirled around on her heels and stalked off in the direction of a sleek black car which had suddenly appeared on the street, seemingly out of nowhere. Lestrade thought it really showed what a day he'd had that this barely gave him pause.

'She watches far too much TV,' Sherlock muttered on Lestrade's left.

'Says one drama queen about the other,' Donovan murmured on his other side.

Lestrade himself simply stood there, staring after Anthea's retreating form, and scratched his head.


End file.
